Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

The Green Lady by Paul Johnston (Book Review)

“Screw the devil. We’re in Hades’ kingdom, and we have to get out.” – Alex Mavros

As the 2004 Summer Olympics descend upon Athens, half Scots half Greek private investigator Alex Mavros finds himself living with best friend Yiorgos Pandazopoulos (a.k.a. the Fat Man), having finally been kicked to the curb by his perpetually high-strung, and slightly unstable, girlfriend, Niki.

And while the Fat Man is having an intense love-hate relationship with the games–the unabashed Communist is appalled at the obscene amount of money being spent…but loves sitting in front of the TV going on about it–Mavros would just assume have a break from it all.

That opportunity presents itself in the guise of a new job, when he’s approached by the wife of one of Greece’s wealthiest businessmen, Paschos Poulou, with the request that Mavros find their fourteen-year-old daughter, who’s been missing for over three months. Surprised he’d not heard about it before, Mavros is informed that the family has keep a media blackout on the situation, and has been telling friends the girl is on a trip abroad.

Instructed not to talk to the police, who are conducting their own investigation, or any of the family’s friends or associates, Mavros finds himself in the frustrating position of starting an investigation without being able to pursue any of the normal avenues of inquiry one would explore in a missing persons case. Events take an even more bizarre turn when the bodies of two people who were tortured before their deaths turn up in the vicinity of the two towns Mavros manages to follow his smattering of clues to. Neither of the victims is the missing girl, yet there’s something familiar to Mavros about the manner of their death…something which signifies a potentially deadly turn of events for the PI.

Having the Olympics as the backdrop for The Green Lady, the fifth installment in the Mavros series, allows author Paul Johnston to turn the Fat Man loose for commentary about the greed and fraud that ran rampant during the country’s preparations for the Games, an abuse which many point to as one of the underlying factors that started Greece down the road to its current sad economic state. Lest you get concerned that the book is too preachy, however, rest assured that the Fat Man’s banter with Mavros has a decidedly comical flavor to it. Incorporating the Olympics also allows Johnston to throw yet another obstacle in Mavros’s investigative path, as the authorities are even more tight-lipped than usual about the murders that are occurring for fear of the bad PR and potential impact on tourists should the news get out.

Not content merely to have Mavros encounter difficulty with his current investigation, however, Johnston diabolically brings a character from Mavros’s past back to wreak havoc as well, specifically the Son half of the “Father and Son” torture team whom Mavros confronted in book three of the series, The Golden Silence. Add to that some shady environmental practices going on at one of Paschos Poulou’s factories, as well as the equally shady conduct of Poulou’s attorney, Rovertos Bekakos, and Mavros most definitely has his hands full trying to figure out how it all fits together and what relevance it has to the missing young woman.

For a series set in Greece, Johnston has, apart from a brief foray in The Last Red Death, actually stayed away from Greek mythology in his writing–until now. Starting with the cover, which depicts the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, a location which does factor into the story, Johnston mines the myth of Demeter and Persephone on several levels in The Green Lady (the title itself being a reference to Demeter). There is the direct parallel one can draw between the mother and missing daughter of the myth and those in current story, but there is also a more subtle correlation between Demeter’s representation of fertility and the environmental impact Poulou’s factory is having on the fertility of the land. Indeed, having finally decided to make extensive use of Greek mythology, Johnston does so to wonderfully nuanced effect.

And as he does in each of the Mavros books, Johnston plays his cards close to the vest right up until endgame, keeping both the reader and Mavros off balance about who’s to be trusted and who’s looking to knife Mavros in the back…figuratively and literally. The end result of it all is perhaps the tightest, most straightforward thriller in the Mavros catalog, one which longtime fans of the series will devour, and which can also serve as a wonderful entry into the world of Mavros for the heretofore uninitiated.

The Green Lady is available from Crème de la Crime (ISBN: 978-1780295237).